Laura MacAdam
  
  
  
To A Literary Sister on Her Birthday
  Selections From Childe Laura's Request
  


I
  Oh Sister, how I love to chat with thee
    Within this grand volume of song and prose
  That you so kindly did bequeath to me:
     I hear your thoughts flit about these leaves,
  Your pencil's impression remains--it throws 
     Some light my way at stanza forty-two,
  Gets a laugh at fifty-three, but some No's!
     We often disagree.  Yet when all's through
  Who can I thank for insight, dear Sister? Just you.



II
  Dear, is it not clear and apparent yet?
    Yes, I compose these lines only in lieu
  Of reading CHP.  The goal's not met,
    I must discern this: from whose point of view
  Is the voice in Canto III?  Is it true,
    O wise, green-eyed goddess: "Here Byron, here Childe?"
  Do not fail me, for my fate lies with you;
    Escape from this scheme with which I'm beguiled
  Can only spring from those notes I know you've filed.



III
    Happy Birthday, my beloved Sister,
      Yes, belated, but O! Can you not see?
    My brain is but a festering blister
      Because of Byron, who you gave to me.
    True, an easier read  tis Canto III,
      But why not send a bundle, through the post,
    Of your key notes? Please dear, make me privy
      So that my G.P.A. will let me coast
    And together my G.R.E. scores we can toast.




Copyright 1994



  
  
      
  
Driven to Distraction            Laura MacAdam
  
  The screams of a shivering and starving
  sonnet travel through thin walls,
  but die before I reach the door--
  Cruel Byron would not let me leave.
  He is no gentleman, I'll tell you that;
  he shouts and stomps and storms across my floor,
  demanding that I look, that I know 
  what his journey was all about.
  And there sits poor Humphry Clinker, 
  abandoned, but unaware--he is too polite and old,
  and his letters too quiet for me to try to read 
  while Byron boasts on one side,
  and on the other Espa¤ol snickers at my attempt to speak,
  taunting my ears with a multisyllabic babble
  of tenses past and imperfect, drowning 
  my protestations in a sea of articles
  defiantly floating across a foreign page.
  Yet my own tongue betrays me too,
  stumbling over objects, clauses, and adverbial nouns,
  then shocking me senseless with troublesome verbs.
  All the while my phone stays silent,
  not bringing distant voices to relieve my ear.
  But a few words on the wire would ease my heart
  and strengthen my desire to don my helmet,
  assemble my armor, and wield my sword 
  against the gruesome Gre-Devil lurking up ahead.
  To hear Love's voice stretch across the ocean
  would far outweigh the sadistic pleasure
  of shutting Lord B out forever--would delight me 
  more than seeing in Red "­A+ Muy Bien!"
  If my love spoke to me today
  I'd easily traverse that not expeditious route
  of Humphry and his pals.  If love requested a reply, be
  assured,
  my tortured tongue would glide,
  cases objective or nominative pushed aside
  --I care not whether it's he & I, me & him, he & me--
  Grammar be gone!
  For when Love speaks, all I hear is "us,"
  all I need is "we."



 
Copyright 1994